If church leaders put as much effort into trying to engage people in the mission of the church as they used to (or still) put into trying to drive attendance, they would see a huge spike in both engagement and attendance.

Conversely, leaders who focused solely on attendance or misconstrue what engagement is will continue to see declining attendance.

At Connexus Church, where I serve as Founding and Teaching pastor, we’re seeing encouraging spikes in physical and online attendance (the two are not mutually exclusive) at established locations, our online campus and our new location.

The growth in the number of new unchurched people has come for sure by the grace of God, but also after almost five years of focusing on increasing engagement in these 7 ways. I also outlined why we made the shift and many people have made the shift in my book, Lasting Impact.

Church leaders, if you cared as much about engagement as you did about attendance, you’d likely see a spike in attendance as your mission grows and expands.

2. Attendance Grows Out Of Engagement Anyway

As the Christian movement grew and it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, mere church ‘attendance’ became an option.

Fast forward to our lifetime, and even in growing, effective churches, attendance had become an established path to engagement.

The big idea was this: come, and eventually you’ll get engaged.

That worked (quite effectively, actually) when people used to flock to church.

But in an era when the number of unchurched is constantly on the rise and even Christians don’t attend church as often anymore (here are 10 reasons for that), that strategy is becoming less and less effective.

Yet, many churches (even growing churches) are still counting on getting people to attend, hoping it drives engagement.

The shelf life of that strategy is limited because the number of people who want to attend church drops every year.

To say it clearly one more timne, in the future church attendance won’t drive engagement; engagement will drive attendance.

3. Trying To Attract People In A Post-Christian Culture Can Work Against The Mission

I am all for making church as attractive and accessible as possible.

But in the future if that’s your only approach (better lights, cooler vibe, hoping people will come), you will get diminishing results. (I wrote on the death and rebirth of cool church here.)

Why is that?

Well, as outlined above, when attendance was more normative and in some senses ‘automatic’ in our culture, attraction was a decent strategy.

Because people would go to church, creating a better church was a good approach.

But (and here’s the underbelly), it also fed into consumerism.

Consumerism has defined the last century of North American and Western culture.

To some extent, the attractional church has played into consumerism. Build something attractive and people will come.

Again, that strategy was very effective when people instinctively flocked to churches, not just in terms of numbers, but also in terms of baptisms and authentic faith-building. And you shouldn’t make your church inaccessible or unattractive on purpose. That’s just…weird.

But in the process, building attractive, relevant churches has had an unintended side-effect: people have come to evaluate church by what they get out of it, not by what they put into it.

That’s a mistake.

Along the way, discipleship has even been redefined in many circles to mean consumption of knowledge. The more you know, the more mature you are. I believe that’s a flawed approach (here’s why).

Authentic discipleship has always been about dying to self. It’s about giving far more than it is about getting.

Again, I’m not slamming the attractional church. I’m all for building bridges to the culture, not erecting barriers.

Anyone who knows church knows that at the heart of every attractional church is a core of Christians who sacrifice—who give, who serve and who invite.

What’s exciting is that selflessness will move to the forefront in the future church because those who remain will be engaged in the mission.

Push Past Your Current Growth Barriers

If you’re reaching more people but you’re currently stuck at an attendance plateau, I have some practical help for you.

Breaking 200 Without Breaking You is a course I’ve created that provides strategies on how to tackle eight practical barriers (including a more nuanced and practical dive into everything I covered in this blog post) that keep churches from reaching more than 200 people. And it’s designed so I can walk your entire leadership team or elder board through the issues.

So whether your church is 50, 150 or 250 in attendance, the principles will help you gain the insight you need to break the barrier more than 85% of churches can’t break. Even churches with attendances of 300-500 are finding the material helpful as they try to reach more people.

Hey, Carey! Thrilled about the article; gotta love when reading something gets the blood pumping. I think I am confused exactly by what you mean when you say “engagement.” Do you just mean service projects? Community outreach? Service opportunities both inside and outside of the church? Does engagement just mean getting them connected, as some like to say? I think I understand the gist of what you mean and I completely agree and am excited about the idea here that attendance means very little in the church/Church today because it has become a “spectator sport,” if you will. I think most would agree that actually getting people moving and engaged is vastly more important than attendance. However, Mike that posted earlier had a great point: people already have 40-60 hour/week jobs, so is pushing “engagement” just moving into a structure that encourages a cycle of guilt and shame? Maybe something we should all be careful with as we approach the subject of engagement leading to attendance.

[…] be writing more about that in upcoming blogs. While we wait for those to take shape, gander at this post by Carey Neiuwhof on the relationship between attendance and engagement and its impact on …. Happy pondering and I look forward to seeing all of you Sunday. Oops! I mean I really do want you […]

I’m interested in your thoughts on membership. The way that I see it is that under modernity (as Christendom collapsed) attendance replaced membership. Making attendance as attractive and accessible as possible was the inevitable outcome of that; which of course led us to the consumer approach we are currently all seeing the failure of.

Your suggestion that engagement will be the thing to replace attendance is intriguing for me. I’m just curious how you see us getting there. Your first point around attendance never being the point nails it. It’s about being the church.

I would just be interested on how you might engage the idea of membership. What role might it play in the post-modern church we are heading towards?

Carey- I’m with you on engagement being more important than attendance. However, I’m not clear on what you mean by “engagement”. Could you write a future blog post that spells it out in more detail? Is engagement being a part of a small group? Is engagement serving in one’s community? What specifically could chcurches do differently to prioritize engagement over attendance? Thanks! Love your blog!